Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Since its early development, the meaning of e-commerce has changed over the last 30 years.
In the late 1970s, e-commerce meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These both allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically.
In 1980s, there are growth and acceptance of credit cards, Automated Teller Machines (ATM) and telephone banking.
From 1990s onwards, e-commerce includes Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.
In summary, below is the important Timeline showing evolution of e-commerce:
1992: J.H. Snider and Terra Ziporyn published Future Shop: “How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy”.
1994: Pizza Hut offered pizza ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opened. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. Netscape released the Navigator browser under the code name Mozilla and introduced SSL encryption that made transactions secures in late 1994.
1995: Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com. The first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio started broadcasting. Dell and Cisco began to widely use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay was founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb.
1999: Business.com was sold for US $7.5 million, which was purchased in 1997 for US $150,000. The peer-to-peer file sharing software Napster was launched.
